


The Land of the Living and the Land of the Dead (The Bridge is Love Remix)

by igrockspock



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Getting Together, Remix, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-28
Updated: 2014-01-28
Packaged: 2018-01-10 09:16:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1157903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/igrockspock/pseuds/igrockspock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve's never been good with women.  Even the zombie apocalypse didn't change that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Land of the Living and the Land of the Dead (The Bridge is Love Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theladyscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theladyscribe/gifts).
  * Inspired by [a man ill-met at the Met](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1054095) by [theladyscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theladyscribe/pseuds/theladyscribe). 



The undead never come to the Met, and neither do many survivors -- at least, not any more. At first, when factories had shut down and deliveries had stopped, the museum had been scavenged just like everything else. Every day he comes here, Steve has to will himself to walk past the blank spaces where paintings had once hung. The frames had been chopped up for wood, that first winter after the plague, and some of the paintings had gone up in smoke right along with them. Others litter the dirty corridors, torn by shards of glass and imprinted with the heels of combat boots and bare feet. Steve had salvaged what he could, and now he comes here to draw in the afternoons, when bright light floods the atrium and glints off ancient statues of marble and bronze. These Ancient Greek statues have survived wars before, and they'll survive this one too -- they're too heavy to loot, and not much use to anyone anyway. Drawing is the only thread that connects Steve to his life before the plague, and the older life, the one before he froze in the ice. 

When a girl wearing a red scarf passes by, Steve sinks into the shadows without interrupting his sketch. He's encountered survivors here before. Few of them stick around long; there's nothing left to scavenge, Central Park is rife with zombies, and a lone person climbing the museum's bright white steps is an easy target for the more ruthless survivors. When the girl passes by again, Steve stops drawing and rests his hand against the butt of the night-night gun he'd salvaged from SHIELD. Her footsteps vanish into the distance, and Steve lets out a slow sigh of relief before he hears her approaching again. He crouches, ready for a fight, but she stops in the middle of the atrium, turning in slow circles between the statues.

"Whoa," she breathes and reaches out to touch the broken arm of the Statue of a Wounded Amazon.

Without thinking, Steve grabs her arm and pulls her into the shadows.

"Do you have a death wish?" he asks, staring at her vermilion scarf. Nothing in New York is that bright these days.

"Do you?" the girl asks, a taser crackling in her hand.

"You can't kill me with that," Steve says.

"No," the girl says evenly, "but I could stun the shit out of you and the zombies would eat your brains while you lie there on the floor. And anyway, I'm not the one with a death wish. You're the one who walks past zombie park every day just to come here and draw."

"How long have you been following me?" Steve asks. He shifts carefully into combat position. The girl doesn't look like much of a threat, but if she's survived in the city this long with a bright red target around her neck...

The girl shrugs. "A week maybe. I thought you were scavenging things."

"And you were going to --"

"Yeah. I'm sorry. It's just the way the world works now." The girl shrugs again, but Steve can see that casual violence doesn't suit her. He doubts she's killed anyone for supplies, and if she has, it wasn't easy for her.

Suddenly she snatches his sketchbook from the floor. "Hey, can I see these?" she asks.

Steve's about to snatch it back and say no, she cannot, but that would feel even more awkward than letting her look, so instead he just hopes the shadows are deep enough to hide the flush spreading along his cheekbones. He'd rarely showed his work to anyone, even before.

"You're good," she says, her eyes flicking back and forth between the statue and his sketch.

"I haven't gotten the face right," he says. "It's the veil." And the eyes. They're hopelessly off kilter, and if he had time before sundown, he'd start over again.

The girl shakes her head. "No, it's really good." She sits down on a bench, pulling Steve with her. They're sitting hip to hip, even though Steve didn't really mean for it to happen that way, and suddenly it's like they're a couple on a first date at the museum, and a Chitauri virus had never turned humanity into zombies.

"That statue almost looks alive," she says, pointing at the Hellenic bronze Steve had been sketching. "I mean, see how her foot is raised and her elbows are pulling her cloak taut? You're getting the exact same effect, only in two dimensions instead of three." She sticks out her hand, almost smacking Steve in the chest. "I'm Darcy Lewis, by the way."

Steve takes her hand. Her fingers are calloused, the nails bitten down to the quick. "Steve Rogers," he says.

Now it's Darcy's turn to blush. "Yeah, I know. I mean, I thought it was you, but I couldn't be sure. That's why I followed you so long. Jane always spoke highly of you."

"Jane?" Steve asks, drawing a blank and panicking. Maybe Jane was part of that nameless, faceless crowd after the Battle of New York, all thanking him for their salvation, sending him letters and cards and emails praising him even though they hadn't really known him. He wonders if Darcy is just some fangirl with a crush, another person he won't be able to save.

Darcy is looking at him strangely. "You know, Jane Foster? Thor's girlfriend? She really liked you. She said you were very genuine. I mean, occasionally a little holier-than-thou, but mostly really nice."

"Nice and occasionally holier-than-thou. That would be me," Steve says, feeling like a heel for judging Darcy, even if he hadn't spoken any of it out loud. "How do you know Jane and Thor?"

"I was Jane's intern. And once I tazed Thor." Darcy's trying hard to look nonplussed, but Steve can see the pride in her eyes.

"That was you, huh?" There had been a story going around SHIELD about Thor getting taken out by a hundred and twenty pound girl. He'd never known whether to believe it. "No wonder you've survived in this city so long. Hey, have you seen Thor lately?" He shakes his head before Darcy can answer. "Sorry, stupid question. Sometimes I just..."

"Miss people from before? Yeah, I get it," Darcy says quietly. "I did see Thor, right after the plague started. He was good. Mostly." Darcy rolls her eyes. "There was something about Loki and angst and darkness, like always. He came to take Jane away, and he would have taken me too, but... maybe it was stupid, but I just couldn't go."

"Yeah, I know that feeling," Steve says. His hand brushes against Darcy's, and he doesn't move it. They sit together in silence, lost in their own thoughts.

Tony had been the first of the Avengers to leave. He'd offered Steve safe haven in a complex in the Himalayas, and even made a decent argument for it: they could take in Survivors, he said, keep them safe and make sure someone was ready to repopulate the earth when the time came. But to Steve, it had sounded too much like a rationalization for selfishness, and he'd never been one to leave a war. Clint had fallen next, cornered by the undead, out of ammo. Tasha had gone in after him, even though it was obvious she'd never make it out alive. By then the Hulk was raging through the city, and SHIELD was hanging on by a thread. Then Fury got bitten, and Steve had fled from the carnage, taking what weapons he could. He'd been on his own since then.

"Did you come here often? Before...everything happened?" Steve asks, chafing a little at the awkwardness of the old line: _come here often?_ He's never been much good with women; not even a zombie apocalypse had changed that.

"No. I should have. It was one of those New York things that I never did. You know, because I was too busy drinking hipster beer in Williamsburg and feeling cool." Darcy shakes her head, and Steve sees that she's embarrassed of her old life. "I was always more of a lit girl -- books, I mean. Not that I talked about that with anyone except Jane."

"Who was your favorite author?" Steve asks. Books are a conversation topic he can handle.

"Steinbeck," Darcy says quickly, and there's a smile playing around the edge of her lips. "Did you ever read him?"

" _The Grapes of Wrath_ came out before the war," Steve says. He used to spend hours reading in his room. Lots of adventure stories, the kind that let him imagine himself in another life, but the Joads had somehow worked their way in. "Seventy years later, and I've still never forgotten the ending."

"Yeah. That passage was pretty awkward to discuss in high school, let me tell you." Darcy's lips are cracked, but her smile is bright. "I always liked _Travels with Charley_ better," she says. "It was non-fiction. Steinbeck just put his dog Charley in the car and drove all over America. I always thought I would do that someday."

Steve scours his brain for the title and comes up blank. "Must have been after my time," he says ruefully.

"I have a copy," Darcy says. She hesitates. "You could borrow it if you want." She bends over to unzip the battered black backpack at her feet, and her knee lodges against Steve's. He catches a glimpse of a good rope and some rappelling hooks before she pulls out the book and zips the bag shut again.

"Thank you," Steve says quietly. He runs a hand over the creased cover, hoping she can see the sincerity in his eyes. Letting someone see what you have is a serious gesture of trust these days. To lend something -- especially a treasured possession from before -- is unheard of. 

Steve can imagine how this evening ought to end: he should push one of Darcy's tangled curls behind her ear. They would kiss, and he'd walk her back to her apartment and make sure she programmed her number into the cell phone he didn't quite understand how to operate. That's not the way things work now. Both of them glance at the amber light slanting through the broken windows, and Darcy shoulders her bag.

"Four thirty p.m.," Darcy says. "Time for good boys and girls to head back to their squats and defend their meager possessions from the living and undead."

Steve nods, tucking his sketchbook and pencils into his bag and rising to his feet. "That's about how it works these days," he says. "Or I could take you out for coffee."

Darcy takes a step back, and her glower is so ferocious that Steve thinks she might actually plan to kill him after all. "Steve Rogers, I have seen some seriously fucked up shit since this whole Chitauri plague zombie apocalypse happened, but to mention coffee? That is by far the cruelest, most evil thing anyone has done to me, and I really ought to just shoot you in the neck and be done with it."

"You could do that," Steve says evenly. "But then you wouldn't get any coffee."

Darcy's mouth is a round, red O. "Are you serious? You have coffee?"

Steve grins. "It's among the meager possessions I defend from the living and undead every night."

He holds out an arm to Darcy, and she loops hers around it. "Well then," she says, "It's a date."

They walk out into the fading sun, crossbows dangling from their free hands, ready to fight zombies. Together, for a change.


End file.
